drones

Northrop Grumman has unveiled a long-endurance unmanned spy plane which, in addition to surveillance gear, can carry pilots, potentially allowing it to fly in civil airspace.

The Firebird performed its first flight in February 2010. It can fly up to 30,000 feet and has an endurance of up to 40 hours in unmanned mode. It has a payload of 1,240 pounds and a wingspan of 65 feet.

It has high-def video, electro-optical and infrared sensors as well as synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and ground moving target indicator (GMTI) systems. There are two weapons points on the wings.

Northrop's Scaled Composites designed the aircraft, which has an interface like a memory stick in that it can be plugged into a PC without the need of additional software.

Firebird will be demoed May 23 - June 3, 2011 at Empire Challenge 2011, held by U.S. Joint Forces Command in Arizona. If you can't make it, there's a promo video here. … Read more

Technology helped U.S. SEAL commandos get to Osama bin Laden's compound, but the outcome of the raid depended on old-fashioned soldiering skills. This from a military force that has made history through robotics in pursuit of its goals. Unmanned aerial vehicles have been used for surveillance, and more recently for attacks, on targets in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere. No other military, as far as we know, has put such stock in unmanned, autonomous, or remote vehicles.

Today we're going to discuss the use of aerial drones, UAVs, and UCAVs with Spencer Ackerman, the main writer of Wired's great Danger Room blog.

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The AR.Drone helicopter demo was going really well, until the 'copter, under the expert pilotage of a company employee, veered out of control from its demo arena and smacked into a CES attendee's head. Fortunately, the foam bumper on the drone was installed, otherwise the guy might not have laughed off the collision.

Shortly thereafter, in a demo set up for me of the new AR.Drone dogfighting game, Flying Ace, one demonstrator mercilessly (virtually) pounded another pilot's copter, which hovered motionless, locked in place by the Wi-Fi interference that plagues this conference every year (check out … Read more

This week, we take a look at a concept that's movie-worthy, but perhaps not entirely realistic for actual life use. Also on the menu: a crazy stunt involving a personal flying machine, a freaky-looking flying robot probe that inspires countless minutes of Star Wars prattling (much to Jasmine's chagrin), and a super sweet-looking speaker with a jaw-dropping price tag. Plus, the Nano gets turned into a watch, and a computer gets turned into a bitchin' Camaro. Finally, we satisfy some fattening cravings with bacon soda, cupcake burgers, and adult chocolate milk (or, "This is why you're drunk").

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The CIA allegedly purchased flawed targeting software for drone missile attacks on suspected terrorists--software it knew was faulty, and that could misdirect attacks by as much as 39 feet--according to a report in The Register based on claims made in a lawsuit.

The suit, filed by a Massachusetts-based company called Intelligent Integration Systems (IISi), involves another Massachusetts company, Netezza, The Register said in its report today. Netezza, a data warehousing company IBM has made a bid to buy, allegedly got a $1.18 million purchase order from the CIA last year to provide data warehouse appliances for use in drones, … Read more

Parrot's AR.Drone is a mash-up of several interesting tech concepts. It's a remote control quadricopter that's piloted via an iPhone/iPod Touch app, while also providing a live-to-screen video feed from its built-in video camera, as well as optional augmented reality gaming apps.

A free App Store download called AR.FreeFlight is necessary for pairing and controlling the Drone. Once set up and installed, you have two flight-control options. In the beginner mode, users hold the left onscreen button to maneuver the Drone with the iPhone's accelerometer--tilt it left and the Drone glides to the … Read more

Google is in talks to buy Yelp and it may finally be pushing the line over what's too big. Sure, a lot of you thought it was too big already, but now it's just getting ridiculous--although, I didn't like that it lost its court case in France over indexing books. We also touch on the Twitter hijacking and new 3D Blu-ray standards.

Twitter hijacked by ‘Iranian Cyber Army’ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10418140-93.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10418270-36.html… Read more

Things are certainly winding down here at the CNET New York offices as The 404 finishes up its last two live episodes for the year. In the studio with us today is Natali Del Conte along with her CBS producer Will--so it sounds like the show is about to get some Early Show love on Friday morning!

Today's show starts off on an unsettling note as we talk about word of U.S. drones being hacked in the skies of Iraq. Apparently, all that was needed was a cheap $26 program that allowed insurgents access to our unmanned aircrafts--how comforting!

Bonehead military security issues aside, it's about time the FCC addresses the all-too-common issue of blaring TV commercials. How many times have you blown an eardrum after an ad comes on that's 35 times louder than the program you were watching?

In our unintentional effort to destroy the green movement, we uncover the ridiculous side effect some new LED traffic lights are having involving their inability to melt snow. It's actually causing accidents, so maybe good-old-fashioned energy-sucking, heat-producing traffic lights were the way to go.

There's more 404 fun in today's show: Y2K memories, "Iron Man 2" talk, and the year's best YouTube videos!

While the U.S. military has several incarnations of airplane drones running on various alternative fuel sources, it's not something the average person, or even company, can go out and buy.

That might be changing.

BlueBird Aero Systems and Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies announced Thursday that they've co-developed the Boomerang, the "world's first commercial fuel cell Unmanned Aerial System (UAS)."

So far the Boomerang only seems to have flight approval for Israel, but it's about to be unveiled next week at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International conference in Washington, D.C., which … Read more